Pubdate: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 Source: Edmonton Journal (CN AB) Copyright: 2009 The Edmonton Journal Contact: http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/edmonton/edmontonjournal/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/134 Author: Todd Babiak Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) GOV'T BETTER OFF TO GET SMART RATHER THAN TOUGH ON DRUG CRIME Threats Of Prison Mean Nothing To Gang Members Engaged In Bloody Battle To Profit From Drug Trade In the late 1980s, long before Teletoon and Treehouse, there was a weekly event called "Saturday morning cartoons." Among the commercials for My Little Pony and Transformers, there were a number of public service announcements. The most famous of these continues to inspire spoofs on YouTube, 20 years later. A man holds up an egg and says, in an authoritative voice, "This is your brain." Then he picks up a hot frying pan and says, "This is drugs." He cracks the egg and spills it into the pan. "This is your brain on drugs," he says, as the egg sizzles. "Any questions?" Of course, in my high school, these public service announcements were endlessly mocked. We knew, from the headbangers and from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, that being fried actually made you funny, popular and sexually active. Rock stars, skateboarders, surfers and Robin Williams took drugs of various sorts. Little did we know that a young Barack Obama was also on the cone. Data are inconclusive, but most studies show that drug abuse rises during both booms and recessions. In the boom of the 1970s, heroin was the big drug. Crack cocaine, and crime, exploded in the recession years of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Something new, or old, is bound to rise up as the economy goes down in the coming months. The recent spike in gang violence in Canada's big cities demonstrates that economic problems for some are fantastic economic opportunities for others -- and they're willing to kill for them. The Conservative government is responding with a series of tough crime bills designed to deter gang activity in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. If the bills pass, and all signs from the opposition parties are that they will, and quickly, gang killings will soon be classified as first-degree murder. There will be mandatory minimum sentences for drive-by shootings. Stephen Harper announced this latest strategy in the war on gangs in Vancouver, a few days ago. Peter Van Loan, federal public safety minister, recently called it Canada's gang capital. If you're a gang capital, you're a drug capital. And if gang wars and drug wars begin in Vancouver, they'll be across the Rockies before springtime. America has been declaring wars on drugs and gangs longer than I've been alive. They spend billions on these wars, and on public service announcements, yet the violence and the proliferation of illegal narcotics only intensifies. Thousands of people die every year in Mexico, in increasingly gruesome fashion, as President Felipe Calderon fights his own U.S.-sponsored war on drugs and gangs. "We got elected because we know the people of Canada want us to take a tougher stand on crime," Harper said in Vancouver, surrounded by the families of slain innocents, "(they) want us to deal toughly with those who perpetrate these crimes." The problem in Mexico, in the U.S., and in Canada, is that professional assassins are citizens of another kingdom. They won't be deterred by a few more years in jail, and they won't respect witnesses' right to testify because it's the jolly right thing to do. You would think that instead of simply getting tough, which has been a spectacularly expensive and bloody failure in exemplar nations to the south, Canada might get smart. Californians, partially driven by a $42-billion budget deficit and partly driven by frustration with gangs, syndicates and cartels, are currently considering legalizing and regulating the $14-billion marijuana industry in that state. As Harper met with law enforcement officials in Vancouver, advocates for legalization and regulation demonstrated outside, making similar arguments about their own $7.5-billion marijuana industry. Even if we do legalize and regulate marijuana, which a special committee of the Canadian Senate suggested in 2002, and which a slim majority (53 per cent in May 2008) of Canadians support, it wouldn't do much for cocaine, heroin and other street drugs -- except choke out a major source of revenue for gangs. The Canadian government might consider a new philosophy around education. Instead of trying to convince teenagers that using pot is somehow 39 degrees more damaging than drinking lemon gin straight out of the bottle, we might start telling the truth: that every innocent hit, toke, snort and shot we take is intimately connected to barbarism, to gunshots and stabbings and beheadings in Edmonton, in Vancouver, in Los Angeles, in Ciudad Juarez. It sounds good to declare wars, but evidence shows it isn't possible to enforce prohibition. Honesty, frugality, courage and creativity do not necessarily add up to soft on crime. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin